Hallowe'en Party

"There's nothing that goes round any residential centre with the same rapidity as news of a disaster, and particularly an unpleasant disaster. And anyway," he added, "one cannot go long through life without knowing what goes on around one. And children seem particularly apt at that sort of thing."

"I don't know if it was Burns or Sir Walter Scott who said. There's a chi el among you taking notes'," said Mrs.

Oliver, "but he certainly knew what he was talking about."

"Joyce Reynolds certainly seems to have noticed such a thing as a murder," said Mrs. Butler.

"One can hardly believe it."

"Believe that Joyce noticed it?"

"I meant believe that if she saw such a thing she never spoke about it earlier.

That seems very unlike Joyce."

"The first thing that everybody seems to tell me here," said Poirot, in a mild voice, "is that this girl, Joyce Reynolds, was a liar."

"I suppose it's possible," said Judith Butler, "that a child might make up a thing and then it might turn out to be true?"

"That is certainly the focal point from which we start," said Poirot.

"Joyce Reynolds was unquestionably murdered."

"And you have started. Probably you know already all about it," said Mrs.

Oliver.

"Madame, do not ask impossibilities of me. You are always in such a hurry."

"Why not?" said Mrs. Oliver.

"Nobody would ever get anything done nowadays if they weren't in a hurry."

Miranda returned at this moment with a plateful of scones.

"Shall I put them down here?" she asked.

"I expect you've finished talking by now, haven't you? Or is there anything else you would like me to get from the kitchen?"

There was a gentle malice in her voice.

Mrs. Butler lowered the Georgian silver teapot to the fender, switched on an electric kettle which had been turned off just before it came to the boil, duly filled the teapot and served the tea. Miranda handed hot scones and cucumber sandwiches with a serious elegance of manner.

"Ariadne and I met in Greece," said Judith.

"I fell into the sea," said Mrs. Oliver, "when we were coming back from one of the islands. It had got rather rough and the sailors always say 'jump' and, of course, they say jump just when the thing's at its furthest point which makes it come right for you, but you don't think that can possibly happen and so you dither and you lose your nerve and you jump when it looks close and, of course, that's the moment when it goes far away." She paused for breath.

"Judith helped fish me out and it made a kind of bond between us, didn't it?"

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Butler.

"Besides, I liked your Christian name," she added.

"It seemed very appropriate, somehow."

"Yes, I suppose it is a Greek name," said Mrs. Oliver.

"It's my own, you know.

I didn't just make it up for literary purposes. But nothing Ariadne-like has ever happened to me. I've never been deserted on a Greek island by my own true love or anything like that."

Poirot raised a hand to his moustache in order to hide the slight smile that he could not help coming to his lips as he envisaged Mrs. Oliver in the role of a deserted Greek maiden.

"We can't all live up to our names," said Mrs. Butler.

"No, indeed. I can't see you in the role of cutting off your lover's head. That is the way it happened, isn't it, Judith and Holofernes, I mean?"

"It was her patriotic duty," said Mrs.

Butler, "for which, if I remember rightly, she was highly commended and rewarded."

"I'm not really very well up in Judith and Holofernes. It's the Apochrypha, isn't it? Still, if one comes to think of it, people do give other people their children, I mean some very queer names, don't they? Who was the one who hammered some nails in someone's head? Jael or Sisera. I never remember which is the man or which is the woman there. Jael, I think.

I don't think I remember any child having been christened Jael."

"She laid butter before him in a lordly dish," said Miranda unexpectedly, pausing as she was about to remove the tea-tray.

"Don't look at me," said Judith Butler to her friend, "it wasn't I who introduced Miranda to the Apochrypha. That's her school training,"

"Rather unusual for schools nowadays, isn't it?" said Mrs. Oliver.

"They give them ethical ideas instead, don't they?"

"Not Miss Ernlyn," said Miranda.

"She says that if we go to church nowadays we only get the modern version of the Bible read to us in the lessons and things, and that it has no literary merit whatsoever.

We should at least know the fine prose and blank verse sometimes of the Authorised Version. I enjoyed the story of Jael and Sisera very much," she added.

"It's not a thing," she said meditatively, "that I should ever have thought of doing myself.

Hammering nails, I mean into someone's head when they were asleep."

"I hope not indeed," said her mother.

"And how would you dispose of your enemies, Miranda?" asked Poirot.

"I should be very kind," said Miranda in a gently contemplative tone.